A Comparison of Brave New World and Blade Runner

A Comparison of Brave New World and Blade Runner

In the worlds of the narrative text Brave New World (1932), composed

by Aldous Huxley and the visual text Blade Runner (Director's Cut)

(1992), directed by Ridley Scott, perhaps the most significant

thematic concern is that of the intervention into the natural order by

elitist human forces. Responders are confronted with stark, forlorn

visions of a future that has alienated the natural environment from

humanity, creating a society of moral destitution, in which its

inhabitants are substantially lacking as human beings. 'Humanity' in

these worlds is governed by loss, loss of the 'natural', and loss of

spirituality. It is man's obstruction of the natural order, through

genetics, that formulate the underpinning conflicts within these two

texts.

The imagery established in Brave New World, "a squat gray building of

only thirty- four stories high" present us with a society that has

built upwards. This synthetic 'World State' operates on a level that

usurps divine prerogative of creation through a process of genetic

selectivity, social conditioning, and the cultural eradication of

Christian and other values - replaced with the philosophies of Henry

Ford. The mass productions of humans, and their conditioning results

in the suppression of natural human emotions, illustrated by the

hypnopaedic teaching reiterated by Lenina, 'when the individual feels,

the community reels.' The New World Utopia of Huxley's text appears to

provide its inhabitants with a supremely comfortable existence, with

every need anticipated and fulfilled; this, however, comes with a

price. The World State motto "Commun...

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... obliterated because it serves as an

inconvenience. The deliberate omission of the sun from the room can be

viewed as a metaphor of humanity's desire to remove the incursion of

nature from all aspects of our lives.

In Ridley Scott's bleak future of genetic authority nature has been

removed from humanity to the point where essential beings of nature

have become a rare commodity of seemingly infinite value: "You think

I'd be working in a place like this if I could afford a real snake?"

An experience of nature is similarly a rarity in the New World Utopia,

only accessible to those of higher castes. This access, however,

remains limited, as the Alphas and Betas lack a true humanistic

appreciation of nature and they condemn the 'savages' for living in,

and with, an environment without urbanization or commercial interests.